Strawberry slippers

January 6, 2016

First of all I want to use the opportunity to wish you all a very happy new year, may you be happy the whole year through!

Last weekend we went strolling through town, together with my grandma, to get a breath of fresh air. All of a sudden we came across a man who had a trailer which was loaded full with strawberries. I was surprised because it isn’t strawberry season yet (it’s the middle of the winter!) and they were very cheap. That morning I had been watching a cooking show in which the Baker made a delicious pie topped with strawberries. It felt like it was meant to be, I had to buy the strawberries and I made the pie from the show the next day.

In Dutch the pie is called ‘Aardbeienslof’. If you would directly translate it would say something like Strawberry Slipper :). The secret behind the success of this pie is the structure: the crust will become crunchy and brittle. The pie is filled with two types of pastry cream, a pudding-like variant and a creamy variant. The soft and sweet strawberries fit perfectly with the pie, but of course you can use other types of fruit as well like banana or other types of berries. During autumn you can for example use redcurrants and blueberries together with a pinch of cinnamon as a topping. If you have any questions about the recipe you can always contact me!

Strawberry slippers

Serves 8-10, takes about 40 minutes

What you need

Ingredients

Pastry cream

1 vanilla pod

250 ml milk

35 g sugar

2 egg yolks

1 tbs flour

‘Slipper’ dough

175 g flour

150 g butter

6 g baking powder

145 g caster sugar (for Dutch readers: basterdsuiker)

¼ egg

Glaze layer

2 sheets of gelatine

1 lemon

100 ml water

100 g sugar

140 g apricot jam

Topping

150 ml whipping cream

500 g strawberries

Some icing sugar

Equipment

Cake pan (without bottom)

Baking paper

Baking tray

Directions

Pastry cream
You need to halve the vanilla pod lengthwise and scrape the seeds out. Keep back a splash of milk and pour the rest in a saucepan together with the vanilla seeds and half of the sugar, then bring it to boil. Stir the egg yolks, the left-over milk and the sugar together and then add the flour as well. Next you need to pour the yolk mixture into the saucepan and stir well. Bring the pastry cream to a boil and cook over low heat for about 3 minutes. After that, pour the cream on a plate, cover it with plastic and allow it to cool down.

‘Slipper’ dough
Preheat the oven to 180oC. Put the flour on your working space and make a small hole in the middle. Mix the butter, baking powder, sugar and egg in the small hole and add the surrounding flour little by little. Knead it into a smooth dough. Grease the cake pan with butter and place it on the baking plate that is covered with baking paper. Spread the dough into the cake pan, and make the edges a bit higher than the rest of the pie. Spoon half of the pastry cream on the dough, except for the edges. Bake in approximately 25 minutes until the crust looks golden brown and brittle. Baking the pastry cream will result in the pudding-like variant.

Glaze layer
For the glaze layer you have to soak the gelatine in cold water. Halve the lemon and squeeze out the juice. Bring the water, sugar and lemon to a boil together until the sugar has dissolved. Then remove the pan from the heater and stir in the jam. Dissolve the gelatine in the pan and thereafter allow the jelly to cool down a bit.

Topping
Make whipped cream and mix it with the remaining pastry cream. Spread the pastry cream onto the pie bottom. Then clean the strawberries and put them onto the pastry cream. Brush the strawberries with the jelly and sprinkle with icing sugar before serving.